To Thine Own Self Be True'
by Matthew R. Barnes
Summary: VPM meets Castlevania: A modern-day Belmont, on the trail of a certain nameless Shinma hunter. Constructive criticism is welcome.


_Insert usual Disclaimer stuff here.  Larva and Miyu, the Shinma, the Vampire Killer and the Belmont family name are not my characters, nor are any other properties belonging strictly to Konami (Castlevania) or the ingenious creator of Vampire Princess Miyu.  And yes, it may be noted that my Miyu is apparently older than the 13-year-old most commonly portrayed in the OAVs.  That's because I'm trying to stick more to the TV version, from the two episodes I've seen, and in these she seems older (in the second, she supposedly enrolled in a high-school, and I think that's a little above a 13-year-old).  Anyone who thinks I've gone TOO OOC with Miyu, Larva, or any of the rest?  Bite me n.n This is fanfiction, call it artistic license.  And to those willing to take all of this with a grain of salt?  On with the show..._

__

_To Thine Own Self Be True_

"Ugh...some 'hunter' I am..." he muttered, wiping the side of his face with the long, thick sleeve of a rather battered old greatcoat.  Stupid puddle...but then, if he hadn't been so distracted by all that damn giggling, he might have been able to keep from slipping.  It was hard enough to keep track of one's footing, sprinting through wet streets in rainy back alleys like this, without having that infernal, childish laughter, so tantalizingly close ahead.  "Just keep laughing, I've almost got you..."

Unfortunately, "almost" still wasn't cutting it, and the best he could see through the haze of rain ahead was the misty outline of a blue-black cloak.  A cloak, in this day and age, honestly.  Especially in _this_ part of the world.  Well, at least he knew that Japan wouldn't prove to be as boring as he'd first feared.

Even as he ran, he reached one hand to pull back the side of his coat, then down to his right hip to unsnap a single leather harness strap.  An eye-blink later his fingers were curled around a segment of a braided leather coil.  This...whoever, whatever it was, had eluded him too many times over the past few nights.  This time he wasn't going to let them get away.

His other hand, he lifted again, brushing wet gravel and grit off the side of his face that he missed the first time.  He only realized he was beginning to lag behind when he caught the sound of that faint, girlish giggle again, further ahead this time.  With a rueful wince at his own mistake, he began a final push at his flagging endurance.  No time for this.  His hand jerked the leather coil free of the harness at his belt, and a deft flick of the wrist brought it to uncoil with a harsh snap.  Neither the laughter nor the cloaked figure moving through the sheets of rain ahead of him so much as faltered.

Just as he was drawing his arm back to crack the whip forward, however, the figure in front of him stopped.  And for the first time, as he tried to skitter his way to a stop before colliding with the...creature...he began to realize just how tall it was.  The blue-black cloak alone seemed to stretch up at least half again his own height—which was not inconsiderable, for his age—and that was before even coming to the cowl that covered...what he hoped was a head.

The figure was facing him now, apparently, because set just beneath that cowl was a strange pasty-white circular...face?  No...he realized after a moment that it was a pale white mask, decorated with black insignias above and below each eye.  The features were too smooth, too perfectly chiseled, to be living tissue.  Or even undead tissue, as he well knew in his business.

He, unfortunately, was so busy studying that mask that he couldn't bring himself to stop fast enough to avoid that inevitable collision.  Apparently his quarry had been expecting better reflexes, because he could almost see the surprise on the masked figure's face as he stumbled into a halt against it, going down in a tumble of blue-black robe before rolling aside, free of the tangled mess.  The laughter, of course, only intensified a notch.  _Well_, he thought a touch bitterly, nursing a sore elbow as he began to work at pushing himself back up, _at least someone's enjoying this..._

Unfortunately, whoever he had run into was still faster, already up again even now.  The eerie part was that there was no sound, no sound at all apart from the rainfall.  Not even the usual muffled sounds cloth tended to make in movement.  Before he even knew which direction was which again, the eerily tall figure was standing over him.  And on the other side, as he rolled to lay flat on his back, was blocked off by a pair of dainty bare feet just a few inches from his head.  Well...one was bare.  The other was intricately wound by a delicate black ribbon that trailed its way up before disappearing beneath a white robe of some oriental style.  After a moment, the same figure descended beside him, kneeling heedless of the sodden streets.

A voice, soft and ethereal in a way he had only known the undead to manage, spoke over his head in Japanese, apparently directed at the silent figure on his other side.  Judging from the inflection, it was a question, and an amused one by the giggle that punctuated it.  The same giggle he had been chasing for so long it now felt almost odd _not_ to hear it.

Then came words in his own language, his native English...and close by his ear.  "Goodnight, Hunter.  You've run a good chase and earned your rest...so sleep soundly."  Following the words came the tiniest touch at the very rim of his ear, something that he dimly realized was a delicate kiss, before a fragile white hand lifted itself before his eyes and waved a haunting, mesmerizing gesture.  He was asleep almost before he felt his eyelids close all the way.

*                     *                     *

_Put out though he was, Larva held his characteristic, stoic silence and stillness as the childlike Guardian lifted the sleeping Hunter up by way of an arm under his shoulder.  She had but to ask, and Larva himself would carry the burden, but the _Shinma_ knew she wouldn't.  Always drawn to humanity, like all her kind, though never would she admit it.  They very seldom did, really._

_Finally, though, when she had him more or less standing—he stood a good head over her, at the least—Larva spoke.  "What will you do with him, Miyu?"_

_"Nothing.  He is harmless, at least to us, and his heart is in the right place.  He simply does not understand, like so many others."  The girl, so young in appearance, looked as though she should have been struggling under the effort of holding the Hunter upright, but vampiric strength coupled with natural and ethereally enhanced grace made it appear truly effortless.  Beneath his mask, Larva permitted the smallest fraction of a smile...then set about studying this Hunter who had taken it upon himself to interfere these past weeks._

_It was a surprise to note that he wasn't too much older than Miyu herself.  Mid, no, more likely late teens, but still not as old as could be expected.  Dark brown hair, almost black in the dim light, was plastered to his brow by the rain, and his deep navy-blue greatcoat bulged with the concealed weaponry of his profession.  One hand still clutched the tooled leather bullwhip he had drawn during the chase, clinging to it with such death-grip resolve that even the Guardian might have needed a moment to pry it from his fingers.  Beneath the coat, open-fronted as it was, his garments were simple.  An unadorned, steely gray shirt that looked to be of a thicker material than casual fabric, and equally thick black jeans.  American, from the look of him, or at the very least European.  Some of the curses he'd shouted after the _Shinma_ had sounded to be in German._

_ "Leave him here, then?" Larva suggested, returning his attention to the golden-eyed Guardian.  She shook her head, a small frown tugging at one corner of her mouth.  "We find ourselves with few other options."_

"I want to ask him something.  When he awakens."  Something in her tone made Larva mimic her frown, behind the safety of his mask.  The best thing to do with this Hunter would be to leave him to his own devices like all the others.  Let him either get himself killed, or wise up enough to leave well enough alone.  Either way, it should be none of their concern.  But Miyu never could simply leave it at that.  At the very least, she usually settled for warning them off.  Though, in Larva's own humble opinion, sometimes she gave them a few more warnings than were really necessary.  If they didn't heed the first, then so long as they didn't become troublesome they should reap what they sow.

_Still, she was the Mistress.  And she hadn't gotten them killed yet.  So she, of course, got her way.  "Very well."  One of his hands lifted, an unnaturally elongated and pale extremity whose long fingertips were each tipped with curved, claw-like, blood-red fingernails.  With the sweeping gesture, the folds of his voluminous cloak enveloped both Miyu and the unconscious Hunter on her shoulder, and the three faded like so much mist in the sheeting rain.  An observer watching the display from afar would have thought the whole affair a mere trick of the eye.  Of course, such was the idea._

*                     *                     *

He was ready, when he woke.  Sleeping-spell...whoever this was, they were good.  In spite of his own grogginess, he managed to vault from his back to his feet, cracking the bullwhip warningly to one side as he turned.  It took a moment to register that there was no longer any rain.  Not only that, but he himself was dry, and well rested.  And whole, apparently.

"Where are you?" he called, eyes narrowed, as he turned one way and then the other.  His surroundings came as the greatest shock yet.  What _should_ have been ground beneath him—indeed, grass, from he rustling sound when his boots moved—appeared to the eye to be nothing but emptiness.  Gnarled, twisted, and for the most part dead trees abounded, their trunks a sickly lifeless gray and with eerily eye-shaped globes nestled among their branches in some cases...and everything around was cast in a weary crimson light.  "For that matter, where am I...?" he muttered to himself.

"Hunter."  The voice made him jumped, and the whip cracked at the nearest patch of shadow behind a tree.  The only answer came in the form of that maddening giggle, just behind him now.  Another fruitless whip-crack yielded more of the same.

"Show yourself, damn you...!"

"I'm afraid it is too late for that."  The giggling resounded again, but this time the childish laughter had a definitive source...a dainty silhouette, half-hopping out from behind a tree now in his field of vision.  The shape turned to him, with the faintest rustling of cloth.  "Hello, Hunter."

His whip-arm was already drawn back and ready to crack, but his eyes narrowed suspiciously.  No, too easy for that.  So he stalled.  "My name is Maximilian Belmont.  Scion of the Belmont Clan of old, and rightful owner of the Vampire Killer."  Fancy talk.  Even if it didn't intimidate—which it often didn't in this day and age, no longer the Belmonts' heyday—it was at least lengthy enough to buy time.

But not enough, apparently.  The slender figure gave that same eerie giggle again, swaying closer yet.  She was young, he could tell by her height and figure alone...perhaps little more than a child.  Somewhere between twelve and fifteen, that much he could tell.  He couldn't see much of her, but her eyes were impossible to miss: large, luminous, and shining golden, piercing through the shadow that obscured her and into his own.  He froze, involuntarily.

He would have taken what opportunity he had to study this strange girl he'd been tracking down, but his eyes were riveted, locked to hers.  Strange, he who had never been this helpless even in the face of Vlad Tepes himself, petrified by a young girl not even as old as he.

She stopped mere inches before him, and at last he found himself able to look from her eyes as she blinked.  Her hands were folded neatly behind her, head tilted slightly so that the pose she struck was almost coy, and the look on her face did little to detract from that image.  Golden eyes raked over him briefly, so he thought to do the same.

She _was_ young, his rough estimate had been very close if not correct.  Her brow barely came to the level of his chin—but then, he always had been fairly tall—and she was a good several inches less broad of shoulder than he.  A simple white robe of oriental fashion, whose name he either had not learned or simply escaped him for the moment, covered her from neck to knees, and in her hair was wound a ribbon much like that on her right foot.  Bound into a circular bun on the left side of her head, her hair cascaded down that side in a single silken tail, into which was plaited the length of that crimson ribbon.

"My name is Miyu," she said simply, slowly lifting one hand to touch a dainty finger to his chin.  He realized, belatedly, that he still had the Vampire Killer drawn back behind him, though by now it was far too late to make use of it.  "Are you still going to try to kill me, Hunter?  I do not think Larva would like that."  And with an eerie, indefinable sound, a greater shape appeared not far beyond her.  The dark-cloaked, white-masked figure from before.  "But then...I do not think that you would like that either."  The finger at his chin curled around the side of his face, and though his eyes narrowed he couldn't quite make himself pull away.

"What makes you so confident, vampire?"  His voice lacked the conviction he had been aiming for, his whip-hand slowly lowering itself by his side again.

"What makes you so hostile...Hunter?"  During the pause, her face drew nearer to his.  He drew back, but it only brought him a few inches of room, and her palm still remained against his cheek.

"Your kind are nothing but murderers, all of you..." he hissed, again without the conviction he thought he should have, "Blood-guzzling monsters with not a shred of humanity left.  Don't toy with me, Belmonts eat your kind for breakfast."

She pulled back, her expression so sad, so wounded, that he almost caught himself starting to apologize.  He held his resolve, though, fingers curling more tightly around his whip as she stepped back, fingers trailing along the side of his face as her hand left.  "You speak from experience.  Your eyes are older than your face."

"Shut up..." he mouthed, backing away and jerking the Vampire Killer back behind him.  His eyes narrowed and once he was a safe enough distance away, he cracked it at her feet.  Just a warning snap, really, not intended to harm.  Not that she flinched, anyway.

She didn't have to flinch.  Her cloaked protector, presumably Larva, was there before she could move, even as Max snapped the whip back over his shoulder once again.  He stumbled back a few paces, but not fast enough for the great cloaked figure.  The white mask rushed at him, an equally gaunt, white hand drawn back for a killing thrust of five elongated, claw-like fingernails.  An instant before they could drive home into the front of his throat, however, the girl's voice came again.

"Larva!"  The being stopped so perfectly it was almost as if he had struck a wall.  Momentum apparently meant nothing to this 'Larva'.  "Stop.  Leave him."  The phantasmal creature seemed reluctant, but acquiesced and drifted back to hover behind her again.  So strange, that a being so much larger and seemingly more powerful than she bent to the will of a mere girl-child.  But then, this was a girl-child who spoke with the presence and authority of one almost twice her apparent years.

"Why don't you let your servant fight for you, vampire?" Max snarled, a bit of his conviction restored now that he was free of her gaze and touch.  "Or do you want to take me on, yourself?"

She simply began to walk toward him again, ignoring the second warning crack of the whip at her feet.  As much as he cursed himself for it, silently, he couldn't bring himself to lash right across her smug face.  Something about the mental image of a fiery-red welt across a pale, childlike cheek simply galled him.  Of course, it was the most obvious disguise for evil, a childlike countenance that decent man would hesitate to strike at.  And yet...

"S-Stop...  Stop right there...!"  She ignored him, walking onward, golden eyes ensnaring his again, and giggling that same eerie giggle again.  "I'm...I'm warning you for the last time, stop!"  When she did, at last, come to a stop, it was only the same distance from him as before, her laughter still echoing about the surreal forest.  "...what do you want from me...?" he let out at last, his voice almost hoarse in spite of the fact that he hadn't even begun to raise it yet.

"The question is, 'what do _you_ want?'" she corrected, one delicate hand lifting to the front of his greatcoat and pressing her palm into it.  He could feel the contents of the padded inner pockets press against him...thankfully, they weren't the precious, fragile Holy Water vials.  That same fragile little hand slid its way up to his shoulder, and the barefoot girl lifted herself up on her toes so that she came almost eye level with him.  "Mm.  Poor Hunter.  Your whole life has been dedicated to an ideal you have nothing more in common with than blood."

"You're wrong..." he muttered, fighting the maddening urge to lean closer and instead pulling his head back again.  "I'm a Hunter not just because I'm a Belmont.  I do it because it's what's right..."

"Right...wrong..."  The hand trailed up from his shoulder, fingertips walking around to the back of his neck.  "You kill, just as do those whom you seek to kill.  An endless cycle that can only end in more deaths.  If one were to finally kill you, another would stand to take your place, and the killing would go on."

"You've no room to talk..." he managed to mumble, but his resolve was beginning to crumble again.  "You're just another of the same."

"You have control of your own destiny, Maximilian Belmont.  It need not be at the whim of a bloodline alone.  The ties of blood are vital, but your life is your life.  You are not your ancestors."  The same fingers began to curl themselves into the hair behind his head, ruling out pulling away any further as an option.  Her other hand lifted itself, as had the first, to the front of his coat.

"What do you want from me, vampire?" he whispered, almost defeated.  This wasn't working out as he'd planned, how it was supposed to...how it always had before.  He should just lift up the whip, in both hands, and wrap it around her vampiric throat.  He could see the fangs now, this close, every now again when she spoke.  Just slightly elongated canines, barely enough to notice if one didn't know what to look for.  He should just reach into his coat and pull one of those silver throwing-daggers.  It seemed a fair wager they'd work just as well in close quarters as at a distance.  And yet, for some reason he couldn't fathom, himself, he simply couldn't.  No..."couldn't" was the wrong word.  He simply _didn't_.

"Mm..."  The same little sound as before, as her other hand worked its way up to curl itself around behind his neck as well.  "You and I...we want the same thing, Hunter.  We are _both_ Hunters.  And we are both after the same prey."  Golden eyes glinted, though Max couldn't make out the source of the sudden illumination, and her head tilted just slightly as it drew nearer.

"What are you talking about...?"  This time he could barely hear his own whisper, though she seemed to have no difficulty.  Perhaps her sheer proximity could attest to that.

"_Shinma_."  The single word was mouthed against the corner of his mouth, as much as breathed out.  "The _Shinma_ stray from the Dark that is their home, and into this world, and steal lives and souls.  Your heritage is to kill them.  My duty is to send them back.  Who, then, is the harsher Hunter?"

"The...what...?"  It was hard enough to assimilate what she was trying to say, without her curling so close to him.  Strange, how easy to forget the age she appeared, when she acted such as this.

"_Shinma_...what you would call God-Demons.  Larva is _Shinma_, as am I, as are all vampires."  She used the arms around his neck to pull herself up, letting her weight more or less rest on him as an arm of his own numbly reached around to steady her, almost of its own accord.  Ever silent, ever vigilant, the monolithic Larva stood his ground stoically where he had been stopped before.  "You have fought them before," Miyu went on, slender lips still brushing against him as she spoke.  As she paused, he even thought he felt a fang graze over skin, though not deeply enough to draw blood.  "You have even killed them, before.  To kill a _Shinma_ is to send it, weakened, to the Dark."

"Then it's been a...a _Shinma_, not you, who's been..."

"Stealing lives?  Yes."

"And why should I believe you?"

"Because you know it yourself.  You have known since you began following us."

To that, he had no response.  Miyu, for her part, wasn't finished.  When he fell silent, she pecked a tiny kiss against the corner of his mouth, and then her head began to descend, craning silently around.  He knew where that was leading and, for once tonight, reflexes didn't fail him.  The arm behind her reached up, snagged a handful of the back of her white garment near the collar and pulled her away before she could sink fangs into the primary vein of his neck.  "No..."

When her head pulled back, fingers trailed from behind his neck to brush ghostlike over the side she had been leaning toward.  "What is it you desire most in life, Hunter?  What is your fondest dream?  I can let you have it, Hunter, for eternity."

"I knew your kind was all alike..." he whispered, attempting harshness but unable to muster the full vehemence he intended.

The hand in his hair tightened its grip, almost painfully.  "No.  The thing you and we are after is a killer and nothing more, able only to take lives and corrupt souls.  I offer you eternal life, eternal peace.  Why do you fight such a gift?"

"Because...why should _I_ have peace, when there are still things in the world I can do to give it to others?  I have more important things to do than live a fantasy."

Strangely enough, she smiled wanly.  "You understand."

"Wh—?"  He forgot himself, fingers losing their grasp on the back of her garb.  All she did, though, was slip her hand back around behind his neck again.

"You know what it is to have much to do in life, with no end to your task in sight..."  Again, the expression on her face was so distant, so sad, that this time he did feel his arm circle closer around her.  He no longer bothered to wonder why he couldn't seem to make his own limbs do as he willed them, and he didn't remember when his fingers had finally lost their numb hold on the Vampire Killer's handle and let the whip drop to curl at his feet.

But then, not quite abruptly but neither with her usual slow and deliberate grace, Miyu pushed herself away, continuing to drift weightlessly above the ground so she could remain at eye-level with him.

"You and I are the same, Maximilian Belmont.  Remember that before you come after us again.  You should leave the _Shinma_ alone, for your own good; they are not like the Western Demons you have faced before, or the Western _Shinma_ you have sent to the Dark."  Max didn't even have to ask.  Dracula.  And perhaps Death, as well.  It made sense, really.

"W-Wait...!"  He started to stumble after, one hand extended as though to stop her.  "I can't just...!"

The childlike vampire spread her hands before her, still drifting backward toward her cloaked protector.  "Then I can only advise you to guard yourself well.  If you fail then your death is on your own hands."  At last, she stopped when her back was pressed into the blue-black robes of the tall _Shinma_ behind her.  "'To thine own self be true', Hunter."

"Wait!"  But he was too late.  Even as Larva's cloth-draped arm folded around his mistress and the two began to fade, a great curtain of darkness descended with them, as if Max himself had slowly closed his eyes.

Gradually, as though through awakening from an eerily realistic dream, Max became aware of the steady drizzle of rain, matting his hair and plastering his coat again.  He still stood, hand extended forward and whip, as he found upon glancing over his shoulder, coiled up a few paces behind.  Same dark alleyway...same storm from the look of things.  But no Miyu or Larva.  "Damn..."

Shaking his head wearily, he turned and bent, scooping up the handle of the whip and beginning the slow process of coiling it by hand once again.  Granted, an ancestral trick combined with an inherent enchantment in the whip allowed it to coil itself with a single flick of the wrist, but he wanted the excuse to think, anyway.

"Larva is right about you, Hunter.  You are persistent."  It was Miyu's voice, directly behind him.  He didn't turn.  "Perhaps too persistent for your own good."

"It's in the job description," he shot coolly back, turning to face her only after he had finished coiling the whip.  Unlike her companion, she actually seemed affected by the rain, hair and clothing matting much like his own under the steady torrent.

"It never has to be."  Her voice was as soft, ethereal, as in the strange place of before, and yet still somehow reached his ears just as clearly.

"It's what I was born to."  He shrugged, hooking the Vampire Killer at his right hip again and then pulling his sodden coat forward to cover it.  "It's the, heh, 'destiny' I was chosen for."

"Then make your _own_ destiny, Belmont.  There is nothing more I can tell you.  I would hate to see the end of such a beautiful Hunter, so soon."  Before he could take affront, or any other reaction, to her words, she turned and began walking.  He could only turn to watch her until, just before rounding the corner from which he had come, she simply began to fade, a ghostly mist creeping about her feet before swallowing her entirely.  And then, she was gone.

And Max, weary enough himself, gave a heavy sigh and turned in the opposite direction to walk, as well.  He got as far as the graffiti-plastered wall not more than a few yards away, almost walking directly into it before catching himself with a chagrined flinch and shaking his head.  "...should've stayed in bed..." he muttered, turning again and making for the direction from whence he'd come and into whence the vampire had vanished.  It was a long walk back to the hotel, after all. 


End file.
